Date: 1808
"Draw close those ties, so fine and yet so strong, / That gently lead the willing soul along, / Nor crush beneath oppression's iron rod / The kindred image of the parent God; / Nor think that rigour's galling chains can bind / The native force of the superior mind."
preview | full record— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)
Date: 1810
"Years pass away--let us suppose them past, / Th' accomplish'd nymph for freedom looks at last; / All hardships over, which a school contains, / The spirit's bondage and the body's pains; / Where teachers make the heartless, trembling set / Of pupils suffer for their own regret."
preview | full record— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)
Date: 1810
"Kindness can woo the Lion from his den, / A moral teaching to the sons of men; / His mighty heart in silken bonds can draw, / And bend his nature to sweet Pity's law."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1814
"Give me to send the laughing bowl around, / My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound."
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1814, 1816, 1896
"To cherish Grace, and twine the golden chain, / Uniting Minds, and making one of twain."
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1815
"You bid me write to amuse the tedious hours, / And save from withering my poetic powers; / Hard is the task, my friend, for verse should flow / From the free mind, not fetter'd down by woe."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1816
"Nor wide stretched lands, nor interposing deep, / Can check the progess of th’ unfetter’d soul."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1817
"On this scroll thou seest written in characters fair / A sun-beamy tale of a wreath, and a chain; / And, warrior, it nurtures the property rare / Of charming my mind from the trammels of pain."
preview | full record— Keats, John (1795-1821)
Date: w. c. 1789, published 1825
"Dost thou not see,--or art thou blind with age,-- / How many Graces on her eyelids sit, / Linking those viewless chains that bind the soul, / And sharpening smooth discourse with pointed wit."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)